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To move on or to stay? The Dilemma of finding raiders

We have been so down on tanks and stuff lately that raiding isn't happening and two of our raiding guildies are probably going to leave server. It doesn't surprise me really - Gutsy asked me to move as well, and though it would have been nice to raid but I could never leave Frostwolves - it's my family and my home! His guild on Jubei'thos just killed the chicken, and it would certainly be appealing for those members who wanted to raid.

So where does that leave us? Sev is still gearing up his monk but I doubt that it would be there by Wednesday. If one of the members leaves, another will likely not come back to play. The core of officers will still remain, with Aza, Raked and Sabre still attending. Luxy might come and raid too (gosh that would be great for all that mail we keep sharding) but that is a super tight roster. No room for sit outs, really. Lushen might go if we ask as well, but I am not sure.

Moo did say that if we changed servers again he would quit playing. Well, I don't know if he still thinks that but he might. That would make it worse.

Half price server transfers were last week, but the option was there in my mind. Would the guild benefit from a move to a more populated server? It wouldn't be the first time we had moved our guild (we did come 4 or 5 years ago from Khadgar-US).

Last night we didn't raid because Raked was sick. I wonder if that had been the last straw for some. Tanking is tough work, I tell you. I logged on late because I had been out.

After hearing the news about the guildies, I went to investigate the most populated and progressed servers. The two highest Oceanic servers are PvP servers - Frostmourne and Barthilas. The highest two PvE servers are Saurfang and Caelestrasz - servers we are familiar with since we see them cross realm all the time.

I made a level one and asked in trade - a good way to tell what the general mentality of a server is like. Surprisingly, NOT full of trolls and some people were very helpful, giving me information about the server and what the general atmosphere is like. Some said that it was generally a pleasant server. Progression wise we would be midway somewhere.

Some people asked me about whether my guild would like to join with theirs. That would not happen as we would probably stay as our own guild and recruit, but it was nice to investigate. I talked to Aza, and Aza told me he would go with us (I was worried he might go and hang with some of his other friends instead) and he said to me that he would recommend Caelestrasz as he had friends there who had alts who would help us fill our raids. That sounded promising.

I rang Fue to discuss the option of moving and he mildly chastised me for not advertising for recruitment - however, recruiting is kinda dead on our server, and lots of guilds are recruiting so the chances of picking anyone up are slim. I was relying more on friends of friends.

Anyway, I put a recruitment post up, and chatted to a few people who were looking for guild, but so far nothing much. I changed the message of the day to reflect some thoughts on the matter, and wonder who will move with us. I wonder if many of our socials will come - they probably would. I wonder if we start from a level 1 guild again! I wonder what I can take? OMG my void storage what do I do about that!

Dath'remar has been a good server, there were some great times here. I feel sad leaving it - I have friends here who aren't in the guild. It might also be quite sad for Dath'remar, as a large guild may suddenly vanish, leaving the horde population even less than it was before.

And if I move servers I will need to change my banner! OMG! It is a bit outdated anyway... but ohhhh change can be hard sometimes!

This all makes me feel despondent. I think I need to do something exciting to make me feel better!

So... I have a giveaway planned - maybe think of it as a moving party giveaway! It will be coming up soon and it will have some VERY exciting things to win. But it will need some knowledge of me and my blog as well as some thinking cap work, so it may not be as fun as you think! Stay tuned.

Comments

I am glad you got some helpful advice on those servers. Sometimes people aren't so nice i.e. The response Dath gives anyone asking questions about anything!

Your void storage transfers with you! I got a fright the first time I went to Void Storage after transferring my main. I had read that it would copy over with me but opening it up it was empty! I was so depressed! All of my stuff was gone. I googled it and found out I just needed to relog and all of my goodies were back! So one less thing for you to worry about if it comes to a transfer. :)

Hi Navi - You have my sympathy with the raiding numbers thing - I lead a small casual guild and we've missed the last several weeks due to not having enough people :-( OK, so I haven't done much recruiting in ages, so it's as much my fault as anything...Anyway, we're on Caelestrasz (Alliance side, so I might not see you around I guess), and we've enjoyed the server. One buddy tried transferring to Frostmourne, looking for a better raiding guild, and came back pronto after having been told to go home till they could raid better... I hope most people there aren't like that...We're pinning our hopes on the new Flexible raiding Blizz has announced - a bit easier, and not having to turn away extras, could save our guild raiding. I just really hope Blizz turns around and implements it for the earlier MoP raids - we haven't beaten Elegon yet, so there's a lot we haven't seen (I did mention we're a casual guild, right?)Anyway, good luck finding more guildies, or a new home!Therellian/Caelestrasz

Hello Therellian! Thank you for visiting - I am sure that if you are on Alliance side we will still see you if we go there - the world is only so big if you know what I mean - and I am not sure Flexible raiding offers what we need but it is a much better idea than LFR for those people who have a bunch of friends they'd like to play with, so I think it's a step in the right direction.I doubt we will go alliance but perhaps I shall see you soon :)

You are in the same position my raid team is. In fact last night as we were trying to find a healer to join us, our raid leader put the same idea out there, that our raid team should think about the idea of moving realms. Unfortunately when we are on a low pop server (or a low pop faction) it becomes very difficult to find fill in's. HIs sugguestion was for Barth - a PVP realm; coming from a PVE realm the idea of being ganked regularly makes me worry but I'm off topic.Void storage makes a great way to get your stuff over and if you are taking your team you'll be able to pool resources and hopefully have all your professions covered so you don't have to buy everything if you don't want to move a lot of toons over.As for the level 1 guild, guilds are fast to level now days especially with everyone out doing dailies (yay a silver lining for dailies) and I'm sure there are a lot of people who would love to pop alts or mains in there to level it fast. Hope it works out, it's a tough situation for everyone when chosing to stay or go

Well if you don't like the idea of server transferring there's always rerolling and leveling up another toon but that's just crazy talk XD. It stinks that you're having such trouble but for a change like that be sure it's what you want to do. But if enough of you are planning to leave together be sure and check out the guild realm transfer as something to look into.

Don't know why you discounted Khaz'goroth - one of the highest population PVE Oceanic servers! Better balance than most servers faction wise (1.3 Alliance for every 1 Horde) and according to wow.realmpop.com it has the highest horde population of any Oceanic PVE server. I've spent time on Cael and Nagrand (Alliance only though) and Khaz has a lot more happening on it than those 2. But that's just my bias showing too ;P

Best of luck with whatever you choose. I currently belong to a guild that transferred to Khaz'goroth from Greymane at the start of Dragon Soul and those guys haven't regretted it yet.

Hey Sven :) It wasn't in my top 2 choices but it is one of the choices! Khaz'goroth is one of the oldest oceanic servers I think! Are you playing Alliance or horde? I've put it to a vote in our guild, so see what we come up with.

It's really strange the number of people/guilds who are currently having problems getting raiders - of all types. Our guild is similar to Therellian's - we've just scraped through MSV (the boss after Elegon is a cakewalk compared to that dragon!), but then we've kinda stalled. Not because we can't do the bosses, but because we're constantly struggling for raiders.

We don't have a set raid team, we have to take whoever we can get to go, so it means a longer learning curve as every time we encounter a new boss it takes a few visits to get it down as different raiders learnt it from scratch each week. We have a standard core of 5 or 6 who always sign up, but that's it.

We've always struggled, at times, to get raiders to fill spots. I think because (a)we're picky who we accept (admittedly mainly just those who can be bothered to fill in an application form!) and (b) it takes us longer to get into any new raid, so we're behind the curve of other guilds.

But this expansion is different .. this time around we've perhaps only had a couple of times where we've had more sign up than we can take. Previous expansions we've regularly had that problem.

I did have a look at the realmpop website, thinking perhaps our server was just very low population-wise ... but according to that we are completely middle-of-the-road. Doesn't help that we're horde, and horde always seems to have half the population of alliance - but it wouldn't feel right even considering being alliance!

I was surprised they didn't discount the guild transfer too. I ended up transferring my main toon to a new server. I have friends who had moved a while ago to raid, but I had not followed because of the cost. I have so many toons now that moving them all would be expensive. That's one nice thing about you not really playing alts. I decided that instead of trying to move them all I would just try and finish up all the leveling that I could do using heirlooms on my current server and then send all of the heirlooms with my main. I managed to get all of my toons to 85 except the shaman only made it to 82 before I ran out of time with the sale. Now with the account wide mounts and achievements I realized there's less need for a specific toon as it's very easy to level new ones.

Holding a guild together and filling those raid spots seems to get more and more difficult these days sadly. We've been having the same issues, and for quite some time I had to play my tank rather than my warlock since we were missing our off-tank. I even started leveling up a tank class that I enjoy enough to switch to should our off-tank never come back. But like the day after my new tank hit 90 we finally found a new tank!

At least it means I'm back to playing my Warlock. But it's still hard to keep going with raids. Maybe it's because the average age of people is higher? Or people do more things outside of WoW? I don't know, but we have issues even getting enough of our raiders online for our two raid nights a week. We've been trying to recruit, but even if we sometimes get new people, there are a lot of hit and miss cases out there sadly. People who just want to use your guild as a launch pad for something bigger or better, or people that just don't fit into your guild..

Hopefully the move to another server will work out for you guys. I will keep my fingers crossed!

Don't worry about the level 1 guild thing. It's either very fast to level as someone said, or if your GM is using the Guild Transfer rather than the Char Transfer service (costs 10 euros extra), it will transfer the entire guild with the guild bank, achievements and level. I think it even remembers people's reputation with the guild when they transfer and join it again.

Hey Saga :) I think people just get sick of the game and don't want to play, or have no incentive to play - or they are happy to claim back their real lives LOL! Oh I just read all about the guild transfer thing and you can keep all the stuff when you go across if you do a guild transfer, so that should be ok. I just worry about the socials who login and wonder where everyone went!